Quote attributed to Adolf Hitler in Southwest High School yearbook stirs controversy

GREEN BAY - Southwest High School seniors will no longer be able to submit quotes to run with their photos after a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler slipped through the editing process.

Southwest administrators sent a message to families Friday saying a parent had objected to a quote that appeared under a senior's picture in the recently released yearbook.

The male student's yearbook quote read:

"'If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.' - Adolf Hitler."

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A quote, attributed to Adolf Hitler, made it into Southwest High School's yearbook. Pictured is the quote.(Photo: Samantha Hernandez/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

The message to parents also stated the practice of using senior quotes was being discontinued because of other problems with producing that section of the book.

Putting the 2019 yearbook together was a struggle for advisers because students submitted inappropriate quotes that were rejected, said Green Bay School District spokeswoman Lori Blakeslee.

She said she had not spoken with the student who picked the quote and did not know his motivation for submitting it.

The student did not return a message asking for comment.

While attributed to Hitler, the Nazi party leader who orchestrated the mass killing of Jews during the Holocaust, the quote is actually a paraphrase of a statement by Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

“Is it a big deal? To me, I would say that particular quote is somewhat different (than other Nazi quotations). It speaks to the power of propaganda and how people can be manipulated by strong figures or by the forces of propaganda,” said David Coury, professor of humanities and German at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Context is important, and citing the quote is not necessarily the same as endorsing it, said Peter Staudenmaier, associate professor of history at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

“(The student) may well have been quoting it as a warning,” Staudenmaier said.

Teaching moment

Each Green Bay School Board member has schools they are designated to keep tabs on, and Rhonda Sitnikau's schools include Southwest.

Sitnikau said a student brought the yearbook situation to her attention. The student felt the decision-making about what quotes to use had been unfair.

“Initially a few (students) were asking if they could put in some quotes in French for their senior picture,” she said. They were told no, and became upset after seeing the Hitler quote.

“I would say it's fair to say there seems to be issues of, I guess, fairness when it comes to what was being used and what wasn’t,” she said.

An adviser and two students were responsible for checking the quotes.

Blakeslee was unable to say how decisions were made about which quotes were allowed to appear in print.

The school should take the opportunity to treat this incident as a learning lesson, said Rabbi Moishe Steigmann of Congregation Cnesses Israel in Green Bay.

“The flip side though, being in a school, part of the responsibility of the school is to teach and educate the students ... it's learning how to engage with people and how to engage with the world. Building levels of tolerance and understanding,” Steigmann said.

Are you a Southwest High School student or parent who want to comment on this issue? Contact Samantha Hernandez at (920) 431-8385 or svhernande@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @svhernandez or Facebook at www.facebook.com/samanthahernandezreporter/.